Things not Seen
by Petronia
Summary: Some time after the events of the second (anime-only) Mugenjou Arc, Toshiki and Ren have an extended conversation about Life And All That.


**Things Not Seen**

_Tanabata '04 Challenge: akatonbo_

A month after Kazuki left, the girl returned to the aboveground headquarters of the Volts. It was perhaps an hour after sunrise, and Toshiki was training in the west courtyard. At some point it had been a parking lot, but parts of the surrounding wall had fallen in due to earthquake. Now it was filled with tall weeds and weathered blocks of rubble, and commanded a clear view of the building's main rear entrance. He had expected the street to be deserted, so when instinct spoke of lingering presence he lowered his hands from the finishing stance and turned. She was standing in the shadow of the foyer, about where the revolving glass doors would be if any such still existed in Mugenjou; exiting, not entering. A lumpy canvas knapsack dangled from her hand. When their gazes crossed she hesitated visibly, then took off at a run.

Until then he hadn't thought he would see her again.

* * *

On the second day he did not see her, but she was there briefly on the third day, and again on the fourth. On the fifth day she stayed through the entirety of his stance and ki training, a timespan of some two hours and a half, sitting on a upturned mikan crate by the building entrance. He did not acknowledge her presence, and she made no approach.

* * *

On the sixth day he returned to his rooms after a scheduled patrol of Lower Town to find the girl slouching against the doorframe, arms crossed tightly over her chest. There was no point in asking how she got in; by now she was a known quantity to others beside him. He stepped past her and keyed his code into the numeric pad.

"There's something I want to talk to you about," she said. Tone and bodily stance were so perfectly boyish, so painfully casual that Toshiki nearly had to close his eyes in compensation. The door slid open with a creaking hiss.

"Then come inside and talk," he said. "I'll make you a cup of tea."

* * *

Her name – he remembered after some hesitation – was Ren. She sat on the tatami, hugging her knees to her chest. Tea meant hot water from a thermos, and oolong bags; she played with the glass he handed her, sipped, forgot about it the moment she set it down, then drained it off in gulps as she talked herself dry. She told him about her line of work, which involved scavenging, refurbishing and trading electronics – mostly computer parts – as well as helping out at her grandfather's infirmary. It took her all over Lower Town, sometimes into areas that were deserted for good reason.

"I've had good finds. Stuff people dump because they can't sell it, for whatever reason... They go there to hide too, from the gangs. So I thought that was what she – he was doing." She picked at some imaginary lint on her trouser leg. "You know I thought he was a girl?"

"It used to be even harder to tell," Toshiki said. They looked up at the same time, and their eyes met. Ren smiled a little. Rueful.

Later she said: "It messes it up. It messes it all up – it's stupid, you know? At the time it was like, whatever, don't die on me now. But I can't stop thinking about it. It wasn't even the real thing."

Later she said: "So then I thought, as long as I go where he goes, I'll be okay."

* * *

When Ren got up to go he said, careful not to look at her face, "It's dark out." Sensed her hesitation.

"It is, isn't it."

"You can take the bed. I have a futon in the closet."

In the morning she woke him by sitting up and yawning, mattress squeaks accompanying her loose-limbed stretch. When she noticed him watching from across the room she ducked her head and grinned. She'd taken off her jacket and slept with it tossed over her feet, an extra layer in the unkempt nest she'd made of his quilt and blanket; the oversized t-shirt she wore underneath swallowed her body, making her shoulders seem even more frail. _Thirteen,_ Toshiki thought, _fourteen_ – but Mugenjou counted in binary. Zero to one, dead or alive, children and those who were not.

That evening she came back with a thermos of soup from the vendor in Block 11 (rumoured to have been serving from the same simmering pot since he set up shop, merely adding stock and fresh ingredients as required), and told a story of how she'd bartered a caseless burglar alarm for it. By the time they finished eating darkness had fallen again outside. Toshiki didn't mention it, and Ren didn't get up to leave.

* * *

On the eighth day she said, "I thought you would've gone with him," and Toshiki couldn't answer the implied question.

"Makubex needs all the help he can get," he said finally. That much was true; it was obvious. "Juubei's here. He's committed to the cause of the Volts. Sakura as well... there are others." He'd never paid much attention to their subordinates in Fuuga. It had not been him that they followed, nor had he cared to command them.

"Is it a competition?" Ren asked. Toshiki laughed sharply, the sound surprising even himself. Ren's eyes went round with startlement.

"Why do people keep asking me that?" A pause. "No. Maybe. It's a hard habit to break."

"But," Ren said. Toshiki leant his head back against the mattress edge and closed his eyes. The lowering sun through his eyelids was warm and orange.

"But competing means losing."

* * *

On the ninth day Ren said, "It's the not knowing. You don't get that, do you? Like, it's not... it's not that I _can't_ leave."

Toshiki was silent. He'd entered Mugenjou, left, and returned; each time abandoning an entire life behind him. Each time a choice freely made.

"But it hurts. So what the hell does that mean? That if I tried really hard, I'd die?" She clenched her left hand into a fist, hard enough that the knuckles whitened; stared at it and let go. "Maybe I _can't_ die. Maybe, I dunno, someone up there can just press a button, and I'd be back again. Maybe it's already happened, and I don't even know the difference."

"Ren..."

"I think Jiisan knows," she said. "I think he knows. I can't talk to him about it. I can't... I can't _not_ talk to him about it." She laughed shakily. "And I _really_ can't talk to Kazuki-san about it."

"Fair enough," Toshiki said drily. Ren's gaze darted up to meet his, stricken.

"No! I don't mean—"

"Fair enough," he said again, in a softer voice. On impulse he took her hand, spread the fingers against his own. She had calluses as well, he noted: from handling tools, not martial arts training. Trim nails, sun-brown skin. "This feels real. Do you understand?"

"But I—"

"Why do you believe I'm real? Because I can tell you about places you've never been? Or because I'm sitting here in front of you?" Ren averted her eyes. "Do you know why I came to Mugenjou, the first time?"

She shook her head.

"Because they didn't see me. They _wouldn't_ see me. No matter how I worked or fought, I didn't exist to them in the ways that mattered. That much had been decided before I was born." He held her hand up in front of her eyes, forced her to look. "What this is made of means nothing. Your grandfather sees you; Kazuki sees you. I see you. I won't stop seeing you just because I happen to walk out of Mugenjou. Do you understand that?"

Silence. Then Ren's other hand came up to grip his wrist. When she lifted her head her gaze was fierce.

"Promise me, then," she said.

"Promise me you won't stop."

* * *

That night he sat cross-legged on his futon and watched her sleep. There were no streetlights in Mugenjou, but the darkness was imperfect all the same. Isolated windows, fire flickering above the edge of steel drums, moonlight through tattered streamers of cloud. He thought of Ren's grandfather, bedding down in rooms empty of all other life; thought, oddly, of Juubei doing the same. Thought of Kazuki and his disarming, devastating tenderness, where he had expected only a wall that needed to be demolished.

Mugenjou was a world. It was the only world some of its inhabitants knew; to many more it was the only world that mattered. And it was large – impossible for a mere human to scale its heights or plumb its depths. Toshiki knew all this, could hardly help believing it even now. But Kazuki was outside, in heedless, neon-lit Shinjuku, and wherever he stood or slept now was perhaps a ten-minute train ride from the nearest station. Perhaps.

_Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen._

Ren was a huddled shape under his quilt. All he could distinguish by sight were the sharp curve of one shoulder, and the mess of dark hair on his pillow.

After a while he closed his eyes and listened to her breathe.

* * *

On the morning of the tenth day he said, "You should go home," and she nodded.

"Thanks, though. I..." She shrugged helplessly, smiled. "Thanks."

In the sun her eyes were a clear bright colour, like looking up at the sky. He couldn't find the right words. Instead he said, "Drop by anytime. If you need to talk."

She nodded again, hefting her bag. Then she ran forward and hugged him around the chest, breathless and awkward.

"Thank you," she whispered again, and was gone in the next moment. Toshiki listened to her footsteps until they faded around the corner of the deserted street. Then he turned and went back inside.

* * *

_— Montreal, August 2004_


End file.
